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Developing playful cultures in education Invited talk for Playful Learning SIG Assistant Professor Claus Toft-Nielsen Associate Professor Rikke Toft Nørgård
Developing playful cultures in educationInvited talk for Playful Learning SIG
Assistant Professor Claus Toft-Nielsen
Associate Professor Rikke Toft Nørgård
Quick overview
1. Our background
2. Game//Play studies: A framework for developing playful cultures in education
3. House of Game//Play
4. An example of developing playful cultures in higher education beyond the
campus
5. An example of developing playful cultures in hybrid education beyond the
classroom
6. Signature pedagogy: A framework for developing educational playfulness
1. Our background
Hybrid researchers: researching playful cultures in education
Claus research
Toft-Nielsen, C. (2014). Worlds at play: Space and player experience in fantasy computer games. NORDICOM Review, (35), 237-249.
Toft-Nielsen, C., & Krogager, S. G. S. (2015). Gaming practices in everyday life: An analytical operationalization of field theory by means of practice theory. MedieKultur, 31(58), 68-84.
Toft-Nielsen, C: “Participation”, in: Media Theory, Samfundslitteratur (forthcoming).
Rikke research
Nørgård, R.T. & Paaskesen, R.B. (2016). Open-ended education: How open-endedness might foster and promote technological imagination, enterprising and participation in education. Conjunctions: Transdiciplinary journal of cultural participation, 3(1), pp.1-25.
Aaen, J. & Nørgård, R.T. (2015). Participatory academic communities: A transdiciplinary perspective on participation in education beyond the institution. Conjunctions. Transdiciplinary Journal of Cultural Participation 2(2), pp. 67-98.
Nørgård, Rikke Toft (2016). Expressive and Affective Relations with Technologies. In Bernard Perron & Felix Schröter (Eds.) Games, Cognition, and Emotion: Essays in Cognitive Video Game Studies, Jefferson: McFarland & Company, Inc.
Joint research
Nørgård, R. T., & Toft-Nielsen, C. (2014). Gandalf on the Death Star: Levels of Seriality between Bricks, Bits, and Blockbusters . Eludamos, 8(1), 171-198.
Toft-Nielsen, C., & Nørgård, R. T. (2015). Expertise as gender performativity and corporal craftsmanship: towards a multilayered understanding of gaming expertise. Convergence, 21(3), 343-359
Hybrid teachers: playful teaching & learning cultures in HE
Claus teaching
Digital Games Module:
● Learning games & Learning in games
● Gamification & Ludification
● Persuasive games & Games for change
Computer Games Theory
Rikke teaching
ICT-Based Educational Design
Design: theory, methods & practice
Joint teaching
Game.Play.Theory
Game.Play.Design
Game.Play.Design: ReThink
Game.Play.Theory: ReThink VR
Hybrid projects: developing playful cultures
Projects @ CUDiM we are involved in
Erasmus+: “Playful Learning Environments: Enhancing adult education and learning environments with digital media” (2016-2019)
FKK: “Virtual Reality in Actuality. Technologies, genres, participations, and experiences” (WP3: VR & Playful Participatory Learning Communities) (In process)
Coding Pirates GameDev & Coding Pirates CUDiM (2015-)
House of Game//Play (2016-)
2. Game//Play studiesA framework for Developing Playful Cultures in Education
1. Playfulness
2. The magic circle
3. The lusory attitude
4. Hybridity & hybrid
pedagogy
Playful culture in education: Not play but playful
“Playfulness is a way of engaging with particular contexts and objects that is similar
to play but respects the purposes and goals of that object or context”
“What we want is the attitude of play without the activity of play. We need to take
the same stance towards things, the world, and others that we take during play.
But we should not play: rather, we should perform as expected in that (serious)
context and with that (serious) object. We want play without play. We want
playfulness - the capacity to use play outside the context of play”
(Miguel Sicart, Play Matters, 2014)
Core concepts for playful education: The magic circle (Huizinga)“The magic circle” is a metaphor for the creation of a specific social situation, in which
participants across a virtual boundary into a secondary world or a ‘playspace’. This playspace is
beyond profane seriousness and profane codes of practice, moral and ethical structures, and ways
of being.
This also means that the circle is not something that is not either intact or broken, but rather is a
“fuzzy social process”, a boundary between the real world and the play-world (Remmele &
Whitton: 2014). The magic circle is then a liminal space - a sacred space
The boundary of a liminal space is based on an implicit agreement between those engaged in play
/ the players. This is essential in order to preserve the sacred reality.
Core concepts for playful education: The magic circle (Huizinga)
The magic circle is interesting for education: Because it allows us to conceptualize a
different kind of learning environment - a safe, collaborative place, in which learners
can take control, take risks and where failure and mistake-making is not only accepted,
but customary (Whitton, 2014).
Within this magic circle the learners can together conjure alternative futures and new
worlds to explore new ways of being, doing and knowing through integrating lusory
attitudes and engaging education playfully.
In doing so, we adopt what is called a lusory attitude.
Core concepts for playful education:The lusory attitude (Frissen et al)
The classical version: The willingness to accept voluntary obstacles (e.g. rules, goals, skill challenges) to
make an activity enjoyable in itself and in the end makes it more rewarding, as actions gain special
meaning (Suits: 1978).
Ludification of culture: playful attitudes, practices, and objects coming together in ludic worldviews that
are potentially transgressive, sacred, revolutionary (Raessens 2006 & 2014)
Lusory attitude: playfulness is no longer restricted to childhood, but has become a lifelong attitude
(Frissen et al 2015, p. 10)
Ludic technologies always embody freedom (Frissen et al 2015, p, 38)
• freedom to be playful, freedom to make decisions, freedom towards the world
• contains its own course and meaning - being in and out of control
• being playful is beyond profane seriousness - in the act of play, profane reality is enriched by a
layer of sacred seriousness
• being playful can become a genuine medium of scholarly inquiry into the roots of philosophical
activity (Frissen et al 2015, p. 24)
• playing with the rules - playing in/with worlds - participatory cultures
• potential ‘rite de passage’: a room for new combinations of actions and thoughts.
Core concepts for playful education:The lusory attitude (Frissen et al)
Developing playful cultures: towards hybridity & hybrid pedagogy
Hybrid Pedagogy embody the combination of a lusory attitude, magic circle and
playfulness. It is about the intersections and intermingling of:
● Physical Learning Space / Virtual Learning Space
● Academic Space / Non-academic Space
● Institutional Education / Informal Education
● Garden-walled Academia / Open Education
● Disciplinarity / Interdisciplinarity
● Academic Product / Learning Process
● Use of Tools / Critical Engagement with Tools
Developing playful cultures: towards hybridity & hybrid pedagogy
“As a philosophical concept, hybridity suggests hesitation at a threshold. Hybridity is
not an attempt to neatly bridge the gap, but extends the moment of hesitation and
thereby confuses easy categorization [...]. Hybridity is about the moment of play, in
which the two sides of the binaries begin to dance around (and through) one another
before landing in some new configuration” (Stommel: 2012 “What is hybrid
pedagogy?”, u.p.).
3. House of Game//Play A multi-hybrid house for developing playful cultures
Developing playful HoGP culturesHybridity from cradle to coffin & across ages and stages● Coding Pirates CUDiM (7-12
years)● Coding Pirates GameDev
(12-17 years)● GameIT College ● Aarhus University● Game//Play institutions &
corporations
Developing playful HoGP culturesHybridity against boundaries
Interminglings
Cross-sections
Hybrid domains
Developing playful HoGP culturesHybridity beyond artifacts
Play & Games: design & artifacts
Playful & Gameful: interactions & experiences
Ludification & paidiafication: culture & society
Developing playful HoGP culturesHybridity across dimensions
Institutions, corporations, organisations
Against the grain
Ahead of the curve
Research, Teaching, Development: Courses, seminars, conferences,
talks
Citizenship, Culture, Region: Experience &
interaction design, games for change,
exhibitions
Jams, Challenges, Projects:
Competitions, praktik,, tracks,
awards
Developing playful HoGP culturesHybridity for growing playful together
● Togetherness around: STEM / Humanities
● Togetherness around: solution-making & future-making
● Togetherness around: wicked problems & wicked ideas
●
4. An example of developing playful cultures in HEGame.Play.Design: ReThink (2016)
An example of developing playful cultures in HE:Game.Play.Design: ReThink (2016)
Game.Play.Design: ReThink
(playful courses, processes and
pedagogies)
The Public Library Exam-Exhibition
(playful assessment & evaluation)
House of Game//Play Education Lab
(playful activities, principles and
patterns)
Theorizing the domain through playing with theory
Empathizing with people through playing in the world
Conceptualizing the design through playing with ideas
Finalizing the knowledge by dis-playing sacred worlds
Growing playfulness: Game.Play.Design
Playfully curious (divergent thinking / imagination - the new & unknown) - digging in the dirt
Playfully courageous (inclusion / diversity - the different & strange) - intercultural togetherness
Playfully critical & creative (dialogue / reflection - the wise & sacred) - painful play / playful pain
playfully co-operative (sharing / remixing - the global & collective) - becoming bonkers in the world
Towards a playful pedagogy
Student evaluation. What did the students say?
“The key insight, to this end, that we gained from this first week was the value in
working in diverse teams and applying a critical lens to deconstructing and
constructing gameplay”. ⇒ Room for developing critical thinking.
“Rather than coming together to solve one specific, closed ended problem, the design
space and constraints allowed for horizontal thinking. Each person in the group could
meaningfully contribute to the discourse and production [of the game]” ⇒
Collaborative effort, bite size problems.
“Having a low-key working environment with room for play and experimentation - and enough
caffeinated beverages to keep us energized throughout the day - was a definite strength of the
structure of week 1.” ⇒ Having room to play.
“From the beginning the theme of rethinking was clear - from the texts we were asked to read, to
the games we created through the jams - everything centered around being creatively critical” ⇒
Clear instructions and framing of the rules of the course.
⇒ Daily feedback from the teachers and the other groups: Giving support and assessment
(feedback) and allowing the groups to fail early and learn from that failure (through the design
challenges and constraints), rather than a huge catastrophic fail at the end of the course.
Playfulness and fun in a hectic HE course?
● “It is always fun to do practical tasks as sitting still for too long gets pretty boring”
● “The GameJam was a fun and fast assignment which got us into thinking about
what ‘ReThinking game design’ actually is”.
● “So far, we are tired, but having fun :) Thank you.”
● “It has been fun and it works well to play a game and then work with it”.
● “The slightly playful and fun atmosphere (yet academic) is nice and very
designerly!”
5. Coding Pirates GameDev an example of developing playful cultures in hybrid education beyond the classroom
New technologies creating new practices creating new cultures Children thinking / tinkering their own culture forward
This again comes to shape their game identities, practices & cultures
One example of this:
Coding Pirates Denmark & Coding Pirates GameDev
1500 Danish children (7-17), 500 volunteers, 50 departments
Weekly workshops educating through learning by doing
Workshops & exhibitions (9 run-throughs 2013-2016)
Coding Pirates Arcade Hall - Coding Pirates Playing the Refugee
Crisis - Coding Pirates Game Hacks - Coding Pirates GameJam
Growing cultures for future citizens
How can we educate hand, heads, and
hearts of future citizens and not ‘just’
transfer the surface structure or hidden
curriculum of e.g. societal ‘value’?
How can we move from transmission
of content & tools to growing critical
creative cultures for thinking, being
and doing?
Design thinking process: divergent thinking & imagining new worlds
Formation of hand, heads, and hearts of future citizens
Pedagogical ‘signature’ patterns enabling new cultures to emerge
Growing cultures: from the what to the why through the how
From the what to the why - 1. EmpathyPlayful explorations to create empathy, inclusion & diversity
Empathy develops through exploring & dialoguing
Pedagogical patterns for exploring & empathizing with other views
From the what to the why - 2. DefineConverging understandings for valuable & meaningful think/tinker
Defining leads to shared insight and understanding of a world
Pedagogical patterns for critical playful collective knowing
From the what to the why - 3. IdeatePlayful experimentations to draw up alternative worlds / worldviews
Ideation forges re-mixed ideas through participatory playful generation of multiple worlds
Pedagogical patterns for playfully constructing, de-constructing, and co-constructing
From the what to the why - 4. PrototypeConvergent constructions to collectively create future playful cultures
Prototyping carves out new realities through playful co-creation & worldbuilding
Pedagogical patterns for critical playful co-operative doing
From the what to the why - 5. Test (and back to 1)Delivery of playful worlds into reality(and back to beginning)
Delivering a group exhibition / curation & presentation to invite for other voices & worlds to join in play
Pedagogical patterns for open-ended critical playful dialogic being in the world with others / otherness
Design thinking process: divergent thinking & imagining new worlds
Formation of hand, heads, and hearts of citizens
Pedagogical ‘signature’ patterns enabling playful cultures toemerge
Divergent explorations to create empathy, inclusion & diversity
Empathy develops through exploring & dialoguing
Pedagogical patterns for exploring & empathizing with other views
Converging understandings for valuable & meaningful think/tinker
Defining leads to shared insight and understanding of a world
Pedagogical patterns for critical creative collective knowing
Divergent experimentations to draw up alternative worlds / worldviews
Ideation forges re-mixed ideas through participatory generation of multiple worlds
Pedagogical patterns for constructing, de-constructing, and co-constructing
Convergent constructions to collectively create future gamethinking & -tinkering
Prototyping carves out a new realities through co-creation & worldbuilding
Pedagogical patterns for critical creative co-operative doing
Delivery of world into reality(and back to beginning)
Delivering a group exhibition / curation and presentation to invite for other voices & worlds to join in
Pedagogical patterns for open-ended critical creative dialogic being in the world with others / otherness
Outcome of such divergent processes?Pavlovian candy-throwing pac-man machine
Bridal veil vacuum-cleaner ping-pong machine
Dr. Who modular board game with robots as Daleks & Weeping Angels
6. Signature pedagogya framework for developing virtuous educational playfulness(into the why-ness of things)
Playful cultures for future education
Developing signature pedagogy beyond the surface level: deep structures in teacher & student interaction & experience
Hybrid signature pedagogies: broadening and deepening playful pedagogies through technology & media potentials
The ‘purpose’ of both education & play often remains hidden
The hidden curriculum of ‘proper’ education & the ‘valuable’ formation of students
• Values & visions exist, whether you acknowledge and recognise them or not
• Education becomes more fulfilling & more able to fulfil its purpose when we make intentional designs and decisions that honor those values & visions
• When you know your own values and visions – as institution, curriculum/course designer or teacher – you can use them to make decisions about how to design, plan and practice education to realise its missions, goals and purpose – and begin to validate your playful practice
Why engaging the virtues education & play becomes important
• Values are fairly stable, yet they do not have strict limits or boundaries (e.g. Nixon, 2008)
• But as society & education change so might its values & visions. As our definition of valuable and meaningful teaching and learning changes so does its values and visions.
Virtuous education through developing playful cultures?
• In order to grasp what is morally purposeful about academic playful practice, we have to see it as all of a piece and understand how the various activities that comprise it hang together
• We need to extend and deepen academic playful practice to virtuously perform the purpose of education
• Ontological and epistemological uncertainties (changing education) requires a new sense of moral purposefulness
• And then develop this moral purposefulness into a powerful virtuous signature pedagogy: heart, hand, head of playful academics & institutions
New educational futures?Presenting signature pedagogy
“A signature pedagogy has three dimensions. First, it has a surface structure, which consists of concrete operational acts of teaching and learning [...] Any signature pedagogy also has a deep structure, a set of assumptions about how best to impart a certain body of knowledge and know-how. And it has an implicit structure, a moral dimension that comprises a set of beliefs about professional attitudes, values, and dispositions” (Shulman 2005, p. 54-55)
“...one thing is clear: signature pedagogies make a difference. They form habits of the head, heart, hand [...] Whether in a lecture hall or a lab, in a design studio or a clinical setting, the way we teach will shape how professionals behave - and in a society so dependent on the quality of its professionals, that is no small matter” (Shulman 2005, p. 59)
Horizontally: A particular discipline (‘Pedagogy of the Professions’ Shulman, 2005)
• Ways of teaching & learning cutting across institutions within a particular discipline, e.g. law (case dialogues) or design (design studio crits)
Vertically: A distinctive practice (‘Signature pedagogy / powerful pedagogy: The Oxford tutorial system in the humanities’ Horn, 2013)
• Ways of teaching & learning which have such influence that they may in themselves shape disciplines e.g. ‘GO-IT’ or ‘playful education’ or ‘PAC’
New educational futures?Presenting signature pedagogy
• Signature pedagogies = ‘habits of mind’: the ways of thinking, doing, being in eduction (as teacher / student and subsequently in the world (as professional / citizen)
• ‘We came to see, on the basis of our cumulative findings about creative practice, that there were something as distinctive about creative pedagogies as a handwritten signature’ (Thomson et al 2012) – this also goes for other pedagogies
• ‘When the emotional content of learning is well sustained, we have a real possibility of pedagogies of formation - experiences of teaching and learning that can influence the values, dispositions, and characters of those who learn’ (Shulman 2005, p. 57-58)
New educational futures?Presenting signature pedagogy
Sign
atu
re p
ed
ago
gy
Surface structures:
concrete operational acts of
teaching & learning
Deep structures:
Assumptions about ‘how to’
Implicit structures:
habits, ethics, values & ‘why’
Pedagogical
patterns:
mechanics of
vision
Signature
pedagogy:
methods of
teaching e.g.
‘playful teaching
& learning’
Pedagogies of
valuable / virtuous
formation:
experiences of
education shaping
the student’s head,
hand & heart
“Signature pedagogy in the professions” (Shulman, 2005)
● Magic circles to become daring/adventurous and go into the world beyond the classroom /
campus / confinements of education - playing outside
● Lusory attitudes & actions to be empowered agents that create educational
spectacles/events - dis-play
● Ludic collectives to construct alternative belongings together: silliness, children, pain,
passion, topophilia- Participatory Academic Communities (Aaen & Nørgård 2015) -
playing together
● Sacred/professional play to become virtuous academic citizens beyond assessment (Nixon
2008) - making education matter - playful commitment
● Open-ended playfulness: no endpoint, no endings - being(s) in play with worlds/words
A (beginning) signature pedagogy emerging from the practice of playful education
● Freedom to fail: To undertake activities that are not successful in the first instance without fear of reprisal
or repercussions. Playfully becoming someone through courage: try-fail-try (THE ITERATIVE LOOPS)
● Freedom to experiment: Provides the space to create and invent things, develop ideas, test theories and
experiment (in a context where failure is okay). Playfully making something with curiosity:
make-wonder-make (THE DIVERGENT-CONVERGENT DESIGN PROCESS)
● Freedom of effort: Being able to decide how much effort to devote to play at any given time. Playing fully
with something, then falls back to relax and rest. Playfully belonging somewhere through cycles:
build-dwell-build (THE OPEN EDUCATION LAB & EXAM EXHIBITION)
● Freedom of interpretation: Learning about the world at the same time as learning with/in the world, and
interpreting the meanings of actions and activity within the play space. Playfully knowing the world/word
through construction: world-word-world (ACADEMIC CITIZENSHIP & SACRED/VIRTUOUS
BILDUNG) (Building on Klopfer, Osterweil & Salen: 2009 + Whitton, 2014)
A (beginning) signature pedagogy emerging from the practice of playful education
Developing playful cultures in education? Let’s discuss!
Rikke Toft Nørgård
@RikkeToft N
Claus Toft-Nielsen
@ToftClaus
.
References● Aaen, J. H., & Nørgård, R. T. (2015). Participatory Academic Communities. Conjunctions:
Transdisciplinary Journal of Cultural Participation
● Frissen, V., Lammes, S., Lange, M. De, Mul, J. De, & Raessens, J. (2015). Playful Identities: The ludification
of digital media cultures. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
● Horn, J. (2013). Signature pedagogy/powerful pedagogy: The Oxford tutorial system in the humanities.
Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 12(4), 350-366.
● Huizinga, J. (1955). Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture. Boston: Beacon Press.
● Klopfer, E., Osterweil, S., & Salen, K. (2009). Moving learning games forward. Cambridge, MA: The
Education Arcade.
● Nixon, J. (2008). Towards the virtuous university: The moral bases of academic practice. Routledge.
● Raessens, J. (2006). Playful identities, or the ludification of culture. Games and Culture, 1(1), 52-57.
References● Raessens, J. (2014): The ludification of culture, in: Walz, S. P., & Deterding, S. (2015). The gameful world:
Approaches, issues, applications. Mit Press.
● Remmele, B., & Whitton, N. (2014). Disrupting the magic circle: the impact of negative social gaming
behaviours. In T. M. Connolly, L. Boyle, T. Hainey, G. Baxter, & P. Moreno-Ger (Eds.), Psychology,
Pedagogy and Assessment in Serious Games (pp. 111–126). Hershey, PA: IGI Global.
● Shulman, L. S. (2005). Signature pedagogies in the professions. Daedalus, 134(3), 52-59.
● Sicart, M. (2014). Play matters. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
● Stommel, J. (2012). Hybridity, pt. 2: What is Hybrid Pedagogy?. Hybrid Pedagogy.
● Thomson, P., Hall, C., Jones, K., & Sefton-Green, J. (2012). The signature pedagogies project: Final report..
● Whitton, N. (2014). Digital Games and Learning: Research and Theory. New York, NY: Routledge.
